Lessons from UnitedHealthcare's stalled plan to get oncologists to prescribe generics

UnitedHealthcare piloted a program aimed at getting oncologists to prescribe more generics and the likely design mistakes in that program offer lessons to payers looking to undertake a similar endeavor.

The study found that many of the oncologists who joined the program already had high rates of prescribing generics, indicating selection bias.

In addition, Gupta said, overall generic prescription rates were high before the pilot, which suggests that the program could have been designed to more effectively target outlier physicians.

â€œA unilateral intervention by a single commercial payer to alter anticancer drug prescribing patterns may have been overwhelmed by theÂ multi-payerÂ environment in which most physicians practice medicine,â€ they wrote.

Gupta said commercial payers arenâ€™t into a position to mandate a program like this one, either, which is why it comes back to ensuring that the model is designed to effectively attract the target providers.